Contents

The Spudding Handbook

Welcome to The Spudding Handbook! This wiki format handbook contains all of the information you will ever need to build spudguns, and much more besides. The purpose of this handbook is to explain the principles of spudguns and how they are built and operated. All of the information contained in this handbook is free and available to anybody who wishes to view it.

What is a Spudgun?

There are many different names for spudguns. They are called potato cannons, spud launchers, potato guns, spud cannons, and a host of others. Whatever you decide to call it, all of the aforementioned describe the same type of device: a device used to accelerate a potato down the barrel, and launch it some distance. While it may offend some purists, the humble little potato is quickly losing favor to other ammunitions such as golf balls, tennis balls, and other cheap, uniform projectiles.

Types of Spudguns

These use the energy stored in compressed gas to launch a projectile. The launcher's chamber is pressurized and the gas held back from the barrel by a valve. When the valve is opened the gas is allowed to rapidly expand and escape down the barrel forcing the projectile out before it.

Combustion Launchers

These find the energy needed to launch a projectile from the combustion of a gaseous fuel and air mixture. The fuel is added to the air already in the chamber, the chamber is sealed and the mixture ignited. This combustion creates a pressure spike that forces the projectile out through the connected barrel.

Hybrid launchers are a special type of combustion launcher that use a pre-pressurized fuel/air mixture. This results in a higher pressure and hotter combustion on ignition, thereby transferring more energy to the projectile.

A BB Machine Gun (BBMG) is a device designed to shoot a large volume of small diameter ammo, typically plastic airsoft or steel BBs. BBMGs are pneumatic guns but unlike single shot launchers they require a constant gas supply to function.